Four years after “Hors Normes”, Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache are back in the cinema with “A Difficult Year”. And they present to us this new feature film whose subjects resonate strongly in 2023.
Since they came close to becoming the biggest French success of all time in 2011 with Intouchables, each new film by Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache is an event. Released in theaters on October 18, A Difficult Year is all the more so since the directors have been absent from the big screen since Hors Normes in 2019.
But they haven’t been idle since they were on Arte, thanks to the two seasons of the series In therapy. By drawing inspiration, as they regularly do, from current issues, and in particular the consequences of the attacks of November 13, 2015 and those of confinement.
The Covid which also served as a starting point for A Difficult Year, as Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache explain to us in an interview carried out on the sidelines of the presentation of the film at Club AlloCiné. A stop among the 140 previews organized to promote their new baby, and where they say they have been attentive to the debates and reactions they arouse.
Topics a little more in tune with the times every day
Carried by two newbies in their world (Noémie Merlant and Jonathan Cohen), and Pio Marmaï whom they find after In Therapy, A Difficult Year talks in particular about overconsumption and overindebtedness, as well as the climate emergency.
Which, as the main stakeholders recognize, are “subjects that are a little more in tune with the times every day”. Even hotter today than when the feature film was written and shot.
As always, Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache talk about contemporary themes with lightness, and a desire to draw inspiration from Italian comedy. To establish, on screen, a bridge between two worlds, between two generations. And to make the viewer ask questions between bursts of laughter.
Comments collected by Maximilien Pierrette in Paris on September 18, 2023 – Frame: Alexandre Ear – Editing: Chanelle Morvan